​The NFL plays every Thursday nowadays, and yet the Thanksgiving games always seem to make this week feel super short. To be fair, there are three of them, and the Vikings and Lions kick off at 12:30pm ET / 9:30am PT on Thanksgiving. So Week 12 starts about 60 hours after the end of Week 11’s Monday Night Football game. That means there’s less time between these two “weeks” of NFL football than there is between when most people leave work on Friday and return on Monday morning. (And think about how quickly that feels like it goes sometimes.)

High Margins of Victory Continued in Week 11

There were 13 games in Week 11, and the average margin of victory in those games was 13.8 points. That made Weeks 7 to 11 of this season the first five-week stretch in over eight years in which each week served up an average margin of victory of 12.5 points or more. (The last time was Weeks 4 to 8 of 2009.)Five of the 13 games were decided by seven points or less, but another five games were won by 20 points or more. Favorites went 13-1 outright and 10-3-1 against the spread. I now have favorites and underdogs dead even against the spread on the season (77-77-6). (That exact stat depends on your final lines.)

High Lines and Heavy Favorites in Week 12

​Bye weeks are done, so Week 12 takes us back to 16 games. That's nice, but 2017’s non-competitive ways are projected to continue. As of Thanksgiving Eve, the average Week 12 betting line is 7.4 points. If that holds, it’ll be the highest average for a week since Week 17 of 2013. And it'd be good for the 11th-highest weekly average since 2002 (out of total of 267 weeks). Most weeks with higher average lines during that span came toward the end of the season (Weeks 15, 16, and 17).The Eagles, Patriots, Chiefs, Falcons, and Steelers are all favored by nine points or more. That’s the most such “heavy favorites” in a single week since Week 17 of 2014. The 2015 and 2016 seasons didn’t have a single week with four teams favored by nine points or more. (Weeks 6 and 10 this year each had four.)

Looking Back at Week 11’s Picks

The three-model majority (“Machine”) picks went 7-6-1 against the spread (ATS) in Week 11. The machine has now hovered within two games of .500 for six straight weeks and is 80-75-5 ATS on the season. That would lose you a little bit of money if you were wagering equal amounts on every game in Vegas. And it’s about as good as flipping a coin. Or in our case, it’s exactly five games better than actually flipping a coin.

Five-model unanimous picks (Tier I “best bets”) – seemingly the main horse worth tracking here – went 1-2-1 ATS. It was only their third losing week of the season, and they remain 22-11-1 ATS on the year. I’ve mentioned it a bunch here in recent weeks, but watch out for injuries and suspensions. They didn’t bite so hard in Week 10, but the Zeke-less Cowboys and Rodgers-less Packers both got crushed as theoretical Tier I picks in Week 11. (Cautionary picks are noted with an asterisk at the bottom of the weekly table.)

Looking Ahead to Week 12’s Picks

Week 12 provides another asterisk-laden slate of three-model unanimous and five-model unanimous (Tier I “best bets”) selections. All five models like the Cowboys, Saints, Packers, Lions, and Seahawks against the listed spread, and two-thirds of the time that’s produced a winner this season (still a small sample, of course). But the Cowboys still have no Zeke, the Packers still have no Rodgers, and the Seahawks now have no secondary. It takes a while for that performance to flow through the models.

As always, keep a keen eye on your lines relative to what’s listed below. As discussed here last week, the Lions were a Tier I “best bet” at -2.5 or -3.0, which is where the line was early-to-mid week. But at Detroit -4.0, the three-model majority (“machine”) pick would have swung to Chicago. The Lions won by three, meaning the machines pretty much had it spot on. Lions (-2.5) and Bears (+4.0) both covered.

This week, the three-model majority (“machine”) pick is Chicago at +13.5 but Philadelphia at -13.0; Atlanta at -9.5 but Tampa at +8.5; Buffalo at +10.0 but Kansas City at -9.5; Indianapolis at +3.0 but Tennessee at -2.5; and Denver at +5.0 but Oakland at -4.0. So watch out for your lines and line movement. (Or don’t – the machine pick more or less goes .500 against the spread each week, so you might as well just guess.)